10,000 Miles To Lose You: Or, Rejection & Schizophrenia
My hands tremble as I pour mineral water into a wine glass. I take a shaky sip & turn towards the massive window of my hotel room, which overlooks the Melbourne airport. From my room it seems I can see the entire thing, from the street below to the tarmac. The airport glistens in the midnight rain; I take a deep breath & take in the scene. I have a 13-hour flight back to the United States the next morning, followed by another 4 hours transcontinental to Washington, D.C. I did my journey to Australia all in one 30-something hour go, but my return has been broken up, with the puddle-jump flight from Canberra to Melbourne separated from the main flights by an overnight layover.
I had come to Australia to visit my Best Friend, “P”. P & I have been in each other's lives in some way for 13 years. P was my first real friend, the first person to break through my Schizophrenic shell. We were inseparable in Secondary School, & I fell in love with her in a way. It wasn’t until P moved back to Australia in the middle of 11th grade that I was forced to reckon with my feelings: my platonic soulmate, the deepest connection I’d ever had with another human being.
Unfortunately, P developed major Anxiety issues related to the multiple childhood moves she had experienced because of her father’s work in the Australian military, & dropped contact with me suddenly & without explanation shortly after she left the United States. This ripped me apart & sent me into a further downward mental health spiral that was a contributing factor to my Psychotic Reset. The grief was so strong & intense that even after 5 years of no contact, I was still thinking about her daily & mourning the friendship. She was the first, & until I became a part of the Psychosis Community, only person that had ever made me feel felt & understood, comfortable & at ease. It felt like I had lost a piece of my own soul & I didn’t know why.
Fast forward to 2019, & by chance we find each other on a social media site. We reconnect & P explains her mental health issues, & apologizes. We spend nearly 4 years as online friends, messaging throughout the day everyday. Then, circumstances arose that I would be able to visit her! Finally! Something we had always dreamed of! So I did, & in June of this year I spent 16 days in Australia with P & her family.
At first, things were great. Her parents loved me, P & I got along great, everything felt wonderful & natural. But as time went on, a tension seemed to grow. We spoke less, I started talking to P’s parents more so than to her. P seemed to get irritated with me easily. I had to initiate most of our conversations. She especially seemed off-put when I talked about my Schizophrenia. When we knew each other in Secondary School, I was better masked—not completely, but I wasn’t as blatantly Schizophrenic as I am now. A lot of my more obviously Schizophrenic behaviors/traits don’t come across via text, either. Slowly, but palpably, we were falling apart, & I felt that it was because she didn’t feel comfortable around the “New” me. I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t know how to say what I was feeling, the Anxiety & Paranoia that were eating me alive with every curt response. Unlike myself, I lacked words to express my feelings, retreating inward.
The day I left, I spoke with P privately. Welling in my chest were the words “I love you”, but they couldn’t come out. I wasn’t certain it was true anymore & I didn’t think she’d want to hear it. Instead, “I’m going to miss you” came out instead. It wasn’t returned. It felt like my rib cage had been cracked in half.
At Canberra Airport, P & her mom waited for me to finish checking it & get Disability Service before they left. I looked at P, “We’ll be messaging?”; she returned a half-hearted smile.
The kind Qantas flight attendants felt like a godsend that evening. Thankfully the plane was also very empty, & I had both halves of the Economy row to myself to cry in.
Back at the hotel in Melbourne, I reflected on all this as I sipped my water & watched planes taxi around the tarmac. My chest heaved heavily. Maybe it’s time to move on. Maybe you can move on now.
I collapsed after I returned to The States. Sleeping heavily & at odd hours. I’ve been blaming it as my first experience of Jet Lag, but I’ve been tormented by dying of this relationship. I thought P was my forever person, I thought we would be in each other’s lives as significant figures for the rest of our lives. I’d always felt unconditional acceptance from P when we were younger, but now that she knows I am Schizophrenic & I am even more obviously so, we are no longer compatible. P is Neurodivergent herself, but there were parts of my more heavily-Schizophrenic self that she just couldn’t get past.
I alternate between feeling numbed-out & wracked by waves of pain & Anxiety. The situation with P is amplified by the recent passing of my maternal grandmother, a relationship fraught with Trauma & complications of its own.
Social Defeat (1), chronic rejection & isolation from your peers is one of the many possible environmental Triggers for the development of Schizophrenia. I experienced a lot of Social Defeat growing up, both as a child & as an adolescent. Becoming friends with P gave me hope of escaping that Social Defeat cycle & of achieving acceptance eventually, somewhere. I have found Community & Popularity as an adult, but losing P, in addition to the loss of the relationship, brings up my old Social Trauma wounds & fears of rejection, along with a sense of betrayal. There is a part of me that’s 11 again, & feels completely alone in the world.
Selten, J. P., van der Ven, E., Rutten, B. P., & Cantor-Graae, E. (2013). The social defeat hypothesis of schizophrenia: an update. Schizophrenia bulletin, 39(6), 1180–1186. https://doi.org/10.1093/schbul/sbt134
